Chocolate fondants

This is a Gordon Ramsey recipe with some tweeking as always - the first bit is the basic chocolate fondant recipe, the second part is me messing around putting different flavoured centres into them :)

• 50g melted butter , for brushing
• cocoa powder , for dusting
• 200g good-quality dark chocolate , chopped into small pieces
• 200g butter , in small pieces
• 200g golden caster sugar
• 4 eggs and 4 yolks
• 200g plain flour

Use Darioles or pudding moulds, melt the butter and brush over the inside of the moulds to cover. Place moulds in fridge and let butter set. Bring out and brush another layer of butter over the inside. Then put a teaspoon of cocoa powder inside each mould and cover top with cling film or kitchen roll and shake to cover all of inside with powder. Tip out excess and leave moulds on one side till later.

Place chocolate and butter in a bowl over a pan of water and leave to melt, remove from heat and stir until smooth, leave to cool for 10 mins.

In a separate bowl whisk the eggs and yolks together with the sugar until thick and pale and the whisk leaves a trail. Sift the flour into the eggs, then beat together.

Pour the melted chocolate into the egg mixture in thirds, beating well between each addition, until all the chocolate is added and the mixture is completely combined to a loose cake batter.

Tip the fondant batter into a jug, then evenly divide between the moulds.

Either carry on like this for normal chocolate fondants or follow the instructions in italics to add flavoured centres.

I hvae recently tried a number of flavoured centres and all are amazing :) I have used peanut butter, raspberry liqueur truffles (the best) and After Eight mints. Basically the peanut butter and truffles ones are best done from chilled, take a large teaspoon of either and try and mould into a ball in your hand, quickly, then push it into the centre of the mixture in the mould. The After Eight mints chop into 4 smaller sqaures and stack on top of one another and push into the mixture.

The fondants can now be frozen for up to a month and cooked from frozen or chill for at least 20 mins or up to the night before. To bake from frozen, simply carry on as stated, adding 5 mins more to the cooking time.

Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Place the fondants on a baking tray, then cook for 10-12 mins until the tops have formed a crust and they are starting to come away from the sides of their moulds. Remove from the oven, then leave to sit for 1 min before turning out.

Loosen the fondants by moving the tops very gently so they come away from the sides, easing them out of the moulds.

Serve with cream or ice-cream.

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